Echo
by Dynnzel
Summary: Some struggles are long from settled despite the happy ending of the recent war. Despite the Counsel's attempts to keep things quiet, Cybertron is beginning to crumble and with distrust sewn among the Elite, all optics turn to Earth in a desperate attempt to make the Allspark whole. Two teams will shred through even themselves to set things right.


**I know Transformers Animated is so last season but I still enjoy it, and upon re-watching it again recently I decided to resurrect a fanfic that I'd meant to turn into a comic but instead life got in the way and I never got to it. So I will put it in text for you all. :) I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I've had fun writing this all out.**

**Dynn**

000

_Dreams had never been a common occurrence for Arcee, this night was becoming a rather common occurrence. The event markings were mixes of different events, some pleasant and most much less._

_The hallways were dark and endless, but it was safe. These halls simulated the underground movement in the Omega project's construction. Eventually she reached a massive door, the last time she'd seen them was when they were constructing the torso of Omega Supreme. The white light of soldering irons winked in and out when she stepped just inside. However the orange light smoldered strongest around the spark chamber. Loose code spiraled around the soon to be fired up spark, shimmering with potential._

_Of course the spark chamber hadn't been glowing like that when Arcee had first seen it, it had been cold and dark. This was a memory file. _

_The intel bot didn't like exposed memories, she made a tugging motion with her hands and the massive doors slid closed. Arcee then lifted her hand and the tips of her fingers began to glow, simultaneously symbols and lines of code spiraled in response toward her silent call. The femme wove a new door over Omega Supreme's memory and laced it shut. For a moment the code was a wall itself before it cooled with the image of actual metal. Arcee smiled, feeling a vibrating warmth coming from the door. _

_Her happiness was cut short when she felt a cold presence scratching at the back of her mind, or in this case, behind her. She whirled to face it but saw nothing, the darkness had turned black, no longer her friend. Arcee waited, the silence pressing in around her audio receptor waiting to crack them in half. _

_Stomping her foot caused the hallway metaphor to melt away and the darkness was lit up by smoldering lines of code. The colors varied across the spectrum of red till it fell away into a black hole that had a single massive optic peering out at her. Before she could respond two clawed hands shot out, clawing at her body for grip. Arcee lurched backward but smacked into the door and lost her balance, the claws latched onto an arm and a leg and began dragging her across the floor toward the darkness. _

_Grunting in anger Arcee used her free hand to summon a sword and slice the arms off of her. She didn't wait for the data miner to recover from its scream, she threw the sword with practiced accuracy and it sliced the big eye right in half. The data around them flared and burst, purging the dream of what corrupt code there was._

"Arcee wake up!" Red Alert gave her patient one last shake before she transformed her arm into a minor shock instrument.

Arcee's optics flew open when she heard the shifting of gears and she grabbed the nursebot by the wrist, "I'm fine! Red Alert..." she sat up, letting go of the other femme, "...I'm... fine. No need for that." The purge was still sizzling in her memory so it took her a moment to get orientated.

"We should do another test on your processor, make sure there's nothing wrong." Red Alert insisted.

"No, it's just bad dreams." the pink femme sat up and rubbed her face with her hands, trying to clear the night fright away. Nearly the entire intelligence agency had been shut down ever since the discovery of Shockwave being their Prime leader. Special investigators had been pulled from elsewhere to make sure everything was clean, even Arcee had been plagued by interviews and invasive medical check ups to make sure no background virus had been planted in her head.

Red Alert sighed over the slumped patient, "Arcee..."

"Can I just have some peace through one night, Red?" she stood up and brushed passed the nurse bot.

The hospital was powered down for the night cycle, only low lights lit the paths from the patient wing to the mess hall. Despite the late hour Arcee found a couple bots lingering in the shadows, probably seeking the same solace she did.

A news globe was lit up at one of the seats, the illuminated face was Ratchet's. The elder medibot looked up at her approach, "Still can't sleep?" he asked gently.

"Well... you fall asleep in the middle of a POW situation... and wake up with Megatron staring you in the face over a thousand cycles later..." Arcee leaned against the back of the chair next to Ratchet. The bot was a comforting presence to her, he was the last thing that she remembered.

"I can imagine it's not a comfortable experience, and I'm sorry we couldn't prevent it."

"Oh please Ratchet, no need to apologize you did what you could do." She glanced over the news reports, they consisted of war trials mostly, repairs, lack of energon, intergalactic affairs. A smaller window caught her optic and she stretched over Ratchet's shoulder to select it. A holographic window popped up revealing an MIA list.

"That report is mostly old unfortunately." Ratchet sighed, a couple of armored plates creaking in his shoulders.

"He's not."

Ratchet looked again, "Ah, Blurr, yeah we met him on Earth actually. Was dropped off by the Elite Guard to collect intelligence."

"Really? Blurr? In intelligence?"

"You know the bot?"

Arcee looked away suddenly, fiddling with her fingers, "He wasn't a full fledged agent when I knew him."

"I see... well he was alive kicking and screaming when I saw him go through the space bridge... I'm sure he'll turn up."

Arcee gave him a smile before looking back at the screen.

Ratchet observed her for a moment, it was almost eerie how perfectly preserved she was from that day they'd met. The dents and scratches still marred her armor despite repairs. Over the past few months that he'd been home and helping patch up everyone from the small war, he'd watched her pace from one side of the hospital to the next. Constantly fiddling with things. She became hyper aware when it was quiet and withdrew when it was noisy. The look in her optics at times was that of a cornered turbo fox despite her polite and pleasant demeanor. Most bots like him had had time to decompress from the Great War... poor Arcee had not.

"Want to join me as a med tech?"

"Eh?" Arcee wrenched herself out of her thoughts back to the present, "What?"

"I could use a capable helper, plus with no job I'm sure you're itching for something to do." he resisted a smile when she stopped her fidgeting.

"Would they even allow that? It's not like the intelligent shop is in the brightest of lights right now."

"You're not sticking your nose in places it probably shouldn't be, so I don't think they'll mind."

She arched an eyeridge at him, "What's a nose?"

Ratchet caught himself, "Oh it's a human expression, a nose is-I'll tell you later. The point is! You need to get out of this hospital, for once it's not something I recommend."

The femme smiled and stretched her stiff joints, "Well if this is the professional's opinion, for once I'm not complaining."

000

The sky of Cybertron was a mixture of electric clouds and multicolored plumes of smoke. No moon gave the night company and although Sari was no star gazer, it was a bit unnerving to see such a massive alien thing... unless you counted the first time you saw Bulkhead.

Despite her mechanical side blooming to the surface, while in her nonarmored form she could feel the air just as she always remembered. Thirty-one degrees was still freezing and anything over eighty was too hot. Cybertron's temps were borderline unbearable for the techno-organic. It seemed she would not reach certain thresholds due to the nature of her existence. Maybe she could ask Jazz to teach her that mind over matter junk and things would be just peachy.

"Sari! Hello!"

She jumped, "What?!"

Bee was standing behind her, "I was asking if you were ready to roll."

"Oh... yeah! Of course I am!"

"Can't wait to show you all the coolest places on Cybertron! There's the oil houses, the music halls and -."

"Bee do you think it's such a good idea to be talking about that stuff before a funeral?" Bulkhead said as they exited into the hall of the barracks.

"It's not a funeral it's a memorial... and thanks for killing my buzz."

Sari watched them exchange quips until they reached the road. If one could call it that. If people complained about things like the road around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris they would be absolutely mortified here. There was no rhyme or reason across a two mile wide road and yet not one close call or crash was seen as they went on their way.

Since Cybertron had no sun to rotate around its only sources of light were energon rivers and of course the cities and towns. Everything else in between was dark.

"I was told that all of Cybertron glowed before the Great War."

Sari glanced at the middle control panel, he must've sensed where she'd been looking, "So why doesn't it now?"

"I dunno... Bulkhead you lived on the energon farms... you got any idea?"

"Uh... well when I was leaving for Autoboot camp, my family unit kept talking about shortages in the rivers, like Cybertron was slowing its natural production down. I never actually worked in the reservoirs I worked in the synthesizing fields."

"You made your own energon?" Sari asked.

"Yeah, a lot of things can be converted into energon, some things produce better energon than others but nothing beats straight from Cybertron."

They pulled in between and below a couple of skyscrapers, the harsh whine of the road abruptly dropped away like someone had cupped their hands over her ears. The roads bobbed and weaved, constantly splitting into more and more smaller roads. Sari was practically pressing her nose against Bee's window. Shops, refueling stations and things she could only assume were apartments of sorts connected on or under the web of roads that now covered the sky.

At last they arrived at a secluded tower surrounded by gently bubbling fountains of energon. The style of the decorations reminded Sari of Prowl and with good reason, it was the ninja bots newer headquarters. For bots all about stealth, their building stood out from the rest, having curves and spirals as opposed to edges and straight lines.

Jazz and Optimus were waiting at the entrance.

"Glad you could make it, Sari." the big bot smiled, despite the modesty in his optics.

Sari did a flip as Bee transformed around her and caught her on his shoulder guard, "Wouldn't miss this for anything."

The tower seemed a lot wider on the inside than it seemed without. Everything was immaculate, shined, dusted, smoothed to perfection. Instead of harsh lights, soft lamps hung from the ceilings shaped like the Allspark.

Eventually the halls expanded into a circular room that had busts of all sorts of different ninja bots... some were black and empty.

Jazz held up his hand, "Hold a click." he went forward by himself to an empty area next to their old sensei. Shadows flew out of nowhere it seemed but it was only other ninjabots. Their movement caused Sari to jump and almost slid off of Bumblebee but was saved by Ratchet.

"Sorry I'm late," he pushed her back into position, "Traffic."

The ninjabots all stood in a circle for a few minutes whispering to one another, then they all began humming. Something clicked and cracked in the floor's crystal, but the cracks were a perfect octagon as the pedestal was brought up and out of the floor. The other ninja bots retreated back into the shadows.

"A'ight bots, come on over." He waited for the team to assemble before him, "Prowl was the roughest cut of mold that came out of the assembly, yet he became the best of us. Gave everything for the future of all living things, both Cybertronian... and organic." he knelt and held his hand out to the smallest of the group, "He spoke very highly of you, Sari. I think you should do the honors of preserving his memory."

Sari hesitated, she hadn't expected to participate, it wasn't like she'd ever been to a funeral or had not had the ability to save them. Optimus, Ratchet, Bulkhead, Bumblebee and Prowl's broken forms flashed across her mind's eye.

Bumblebee reached up and touched Sari's arm, "It's ok, Sari." he reassured her.

She glanced at him, then back to Jazz who was smiling to. Anger almost bubbled up but instead of entertaining it, she stepped forward into Jazz's hand. He handed her a circular disk that was just as tall as her, though luckily light. He helped her place it in a socket on the pedestal.

"When a bot goes back to the Allspark, he goes back empty as the day he came into Cybertron." Jazz said, whether it was to himself or to the crowd Sari didn't know. He pulled out one of Prowl's throwing stars, several of the blades were missing and burn marks darkened the gold surface, "His family lays his memory to rest." he held it to her, she took one edge of the broken artifact. It was much too heavy for her to carry alone but she guided it and set it on the disk. Jazz picked her up and stepped back as the pedestal suddenly lit up with a four dimensional bust of Prowl.

Bee watched Sari carefully, expecting her to spring a leak at any moment. Instead she just watched the hologram.


End file.
